The Kennedys

Anybody watching this? We Tivo'd it and saw the 2 hour first program. I'm mixed. I was about 5-10 years old when this was going on. It seems like some good acting but overall a passionless retelling. Maybe we are still too close to the family and their time to be operatic about them. I think Greg Kinnear looks the part but has zero carisma. Katie Holmes is luscious-I think she's doing a great job so far. But to me the titan is Tom Wilkinson as Joe Senior. And the Bobby and Ethel Kenney actors are just the best. The most believeable and sweetest. I adore them!

I don't think this seies could decide if it was a good old fashioned 80's prime time soap opera or a History Channel documentary. It's somewhere in between. Not a total wash-out, but could've been more.

I can see why what's left of the Kennedys were not thrilled about this, but it seems quite fair overall. Is there anyone by now who does NOT know Rose was a religious maniac who probably found the Pope insufficiently devout (I wonder if they'll flash back again to deal with Caroline saying "I don't have an Aunt Kick" and address how Rose basically told her daughter "You're going to hell for dating a married man" and viewing her death as God punishing Kick), Joe Sr was a lecherous, souless anti-Semitic criminal who used his sons like pawns to make up for his own frustrated ambitions, and JFK couldn't keep his pants zipped around anything female under forty to save his life? (Favorite scene is Joe's "premarital advice" to Jack which is basically 'don't rub your mistresses in your wife's face" and Bobby's horrified protest that wedding vows are sacred, prompting Jack to stare at Bobby like he has two heads and Joe to say he's failed Bobby as a father.)

It definitely made me feel sorry for Ted in the first part (where viewers who know nothing about the Kennedys could be forgiven for saying "Ted who?") Rose says "The older boys were Joe's, but Bobby was mine." Uh, lady, you have FOUR sons and Teddy is the youngest, not Bobby. So whose responsibility is Ted, the maid's? No wonder he felt unappreciated or like the unfavorite.

Have to wait until Sunday -- in Canada it begins on History on Sunday the 10th.

I'll watch the first episode to see, even though I think Katie Holmes is a terrible actor, and in the trailers I've seen her accent is cringe-worthy. I'll just try to block out here scenes and concentrate on the rest.

I think Katie looks enough like Jackie to be employed in the role. What seems to be lacking in her is the "steel hand in the velvet glove" that I always presumed Jackie had. She was not a dumb little girl. She was very intelligent, and I think she played her first lady role very well. In those days, you just didn't tell everybody that your husband was having it on with every female he could.

Yes, Greg Kinnear looks EXACTLY like Jack. But again, not a lot of inner strength. I think the director/writers are going for all the characters being pawns of Father Joe and kind of helpless victims unable to stand up to him effectively. That might have been the case....as usual, pop culture and historians with agendas sugar coat and mold perception. Maybe they'll morph into stronger personalities later on. I thought the first son Joe Jr. was very strong as a personality-maybe more like his father than the others.

I am wondering, did they forget Ted existed? (They can't wait much longer, guy's in the Senate when his brother gets shot...)

Actually it's more in those days and especially with JFK the press (who knew EXACTLY what went on with Jack and women) did not think it was right/respectful to 'gossip' about a president sleeping around (the end result being people seemed to think politicians were much nicer people than they really were.) LBJ did things that would curl your hair but it didn't come out until he was dead.

Knowing what we know now, I'm thinking the only thing that really gets the Kennedys is it's probably a pretty fair portrayal of Old Joe. He wasn't a good person and the more I know about him (and Rose) the more I understand why Joe and Kick were reckless, JFK a womanizing fatalist, and Ted turned out like he did. (How Bobby came through a basically sane, good person I have no idea.) That was not a family to grow up in if you didn't like pressure.

Many sources say that until he met Ethel, Bobby intended to enter the priesthood.
After meeting her, his focus shifted to being a good "family man"; and taking on issues that would serve the "public good".

(Favorite scene is Joe's "premarital advice" to Jack which is basically 'don't rub your mistresses in your wife's face" and Bobby's horrified protest that wedding vows are sacred, prompting Jack to stare at Bobby like he has two heads and Joe to say he's failed Bobby as a father.)

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Ah well, at least Bobby came around to daddy's point of view eventually.